MASON is a

multi-agent A multi-agent system (MAS or "self-organized system") is a computerized system composed of multiple interacting intelligent agents.Hu, J.; Bhowmick, P.; Jang, I.; Arvin, F.; Lanzon, A.,A Decentralized Cluster Formation Containment Framework fo ...

simulation environment developed in

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's List ...

Development

MASON is developed at

George Mason University George Mason University (George Mason, Mason, or GMU) is a public research university in Fairfax County, Virginia with an independent City of Fairfax, Virginia postal address in the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Area. The university was origin ...

's Evolutionary Computation Laboratory in conjunction with the GMU Center for Social Complexity. First released in 2003, the environment continues to be maintained and kept up to date. The name, as well as referring to the parent institution, derives from the

acronym An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...

Multi-Agent Simulator Of Neighborhoods (or Networks). MASON development started within the

Java.net java.net was a Java technology related community website. It also offered a web-based source code repository for Java projects. It was shut down in April 2017. History java.net was announced by Sun Microsystems during JavaOne 2003. In Januar ...

environment, then moved to

Google Code Google Developers (previously Google Code) , application programming interfaces (APIs), and technical resources. The site contains documentation on using Google developer tools and APIs—including discussion groups and blogs for developers usin ...

and is now at

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continuous ...

. Whilst MASON is less extensive than other similar libraries it is designed with simplicity and execution speed as a priority.

Applets

Applets developed using MASON include Craig Reynolds'

Boids Boids is an artificial life program, developed by Craig Reynolds in 1986, which simulates the flocking behaviour of birds. His paper on this topic was published in 1987 in the proceedings of the ACM SIGGRAPH conference. The name "boid" corr ...

algorithm, ''Balls and Bands'', a simulation of

Hooke's Law In physics, Hooke's law is an empirical law which states that the force () needed to extend or compress a spring (device), spring by some distance () Proportionality (mathematics)#Direct_proportionality, scales linearly with respect to that ...

, an

L-system An L-system or Lindenmayer system is a parallel rewriting system and a type of formal grammar. An L-system consists of an alphabet of symbols that can be used to make strings, a collection of production rules that expand each symbol into some ...

generator,

Conway's Game of Life The Game of Life, also known simply as Life, is a cellular automaton devised by the British mathematician John Horton Conway in 1970. It is a zero-player game, meaning that its evolution is determined by its initial state, requiring no further ...

Sugarscape Sugarscape is a model for artificially intelligent agent-based social simulation following some or all rules presented by Joshua M. Epstein & Robert Axtell in their book ''Growing Artificial Societies''. Origin Fundaments of Sugarscape models can ...

and autonomous multi-robot systems. MASON may be used with the

Eclipse An eclipse is an astronomical event that occurs when an astronomical object or spacecraft is temporarily obscured, by passing into the shadow of another body or by having another body pass between it and the viewer. This alignment of three ce ...

Integrated development environment An integrated development environment (IDE) is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source code editor, build automation tools a ...

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Mason Cellular automaton software Self-organization Theorem proving software systems Artificial life Multi-agent systems Free software Software using the Academic Free License

Development

Applets

See also

References

External links